So you’ve got a bunch of woodland and desert uniforms kicking around in the bottom of a your tough box since the Army decided to adopt ACU’s? Before you sell them off as surplus to Old Sarge’s outside Ft. Bragg you might want consider slashing them up and turning them into on-the-cheap combat shirts. Speaking of Ft. Bragg, this post might be a down right necessity for a few young Privates reading this who have been spending a little too much time down at Sharkys…
Here is my first hint:
Good! Bad!
When you take your BDU/DCU blouse to the sew shop (or do it in your barracks room for the truly adventurous) make sure that they keep that segment of fabric running across the back that connects the two sleeves. The reason for this is because without it the stretchiness of the t-shirt it will create a sagging effect due to the weight of the sleeves. While not a big deal in of itself, this starts to become a pain when the straps of your plate carrier or body armor start to ride up onto your shoulders and begin to chaff against your skin. I know, I know, you can always just go to the gym and work on building those traps up instead, but for most of us it’s a good idea to connect the sleeves as you see in the first example.
In this case the DCU shirt was done by the Turkish sew shop in Iraq, the BDU top was done by a sew shop outside Ft. Campbell. It’s helpful if you bring an example for the person doing the sewing to work from. Of course, it’s also a good idea to get those pockets moved up onto the shoulders and have some velcro thrown on there as well…c’mon, all the cool kids are doing it.
I know we usually report on $700 pants and $1000 dollar tops but I hope that this post helps out some of the regular Joes who can’t afford the latest and greatest High-Speed kit. Bring your choice of uniform top and t-shirt to the sew shop, I used some old Under Armor shirts we were issued back in the day but your mileage may vary. I know guys who just used regular issue t-shirts and it seemed to work fine. Feel free to hit me up in the comments section if you’ve got any questions!
Kit Up! contributor Jack Murphy is a former Ranger, Special Forces Soldier and is the author of the military thriller Reflexive Fire.
{ 35 comments… read them below or add one }
I wouldn't get ride of them anyway woodland and 3 color desert are making a comeback since ACU sticks out in every environment. Most Police and Federal armed Police use them over the failed ACU anyway..
My first go round at DIY I ended up with the “bad” pic. Lol, this is good stuff, always looking to improve my uniforms w/o breaking the bank on the high speed kit. Keep up the great posts.
PS: If any readers have any experiences with DIY kit that they would like to share, please drop us a line. I can credit you or you can stay anonymous if you like but I think it could be a good way for all of us to learn from each other since this kind of material can't be found in any FM.
Also, here is an additional picture so you can get a better idea of how the "good" example was constructed. If you wear a chest rig it might also be a good idea keep the collar in place as well to prevent the straps from rubbing up against your neck. Check it out: http://reflexivefire.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/…
In my opinion this is a great relief from the articles on $700 pants and instead publishing articles on how to resurrect the uniforms that are obsolete. As long as the wearer can follow the warning label “Caution this shirt was made in the barracks” than this could be a great trend! Heck most all great tactical nylon company’s originated from guys who had a strong desire to make something issued better for them and their buddy’s.
Nice work fellas!
Excellent post. I absolutely agree that stuff like this is cost effective and a big help to those troops or contractors that would like to save some money, or are short on cash. Modifying kit is a great way to go, just as long as the sew shop knows what they are doing and they don't go cheap or take short cuts with construction. That is why it's cool to make connections with your local riggers, and especially the Master Riggers who could sew up stuff to spec for a case of beer or whatever.
Hmmm, maybe we need a DIY ghillie suit article…
I've been building one for myself simply for the entertainment value, but haven't made much progress. It hurts my motivation to not have an actual purpose for it. Since I got out of airsoft, most of my old gear has just been sitting in my closet, and I don't really have much use for it being a college student.
So, I think I could probably do this with one of my old USMC soffe t-shirts and a DCU shirt I've got laying around. What are the opinions on collars? Zip up, button, crew? I could probably sew a zipper into the soffe shirt without too much drama.
You could probably write a collection the size of the human genome project on that subject.
I have a pretty sweet ghillie but it's only like half done!
We couldn’t get combat shirts for our unit because we wore woodlands and DCUs. All you could get was acu marpat and multicam. So a few of us did the same thing just a little shorter in the shoulder area. We used a flame retardant t-shirt in case we got the, very valid “your gear melts to you” lecture. On hot Iraqi days it was a little relief from the flight suits we wore. Those were a pain when you had to drop the short halt deuce. they also worked very well in VA and and South America. I still have mine on hot stand by if it’s too humid for the standard woodland top were supposed to wear.
How about some pics Ed!? I showed you mine after all!
$700 pants ?!?!?! $1000 shirts ?!?! well…. i guess if you dont wanna risk jail time for robbing banks or designing ponzi scheme's… contracting for the defense industry is just as good.
i dont know why we go to all this trouble. if soldiers of the 21st century must blend in… they'd be safer wearing a cricket jerseys, jorts and chuck taylors.
Nothing says classy like a good old pair of jorts.
This is awesome. I always wonder how those Riverine guys made it. Thanks for the information
Cause it confused the hell out of me when i saw them leave the material in back but now i know why
I tried it once, and my advice to to make sure you have little bit more play in the arm length than with a regular bdu top. with a pc on and an under armor bottom, sometimes it tugged on the sleeves. I fixed the problem by rolling the sleeves like I usually do anyway.
excellent, we did this with DCU's and the woodland bdu's when we saw all the multicam gucci gear. i had those too but we could only wear the desert or woodland threads. we made sure we had triple stitching everywhere along with stretch panels between the thighs. makes a huge difference while wearing plate carriers. i am very pleased to see this write up. way to go.
if u havent already checked out swedens SF shop nr 1 lets do it:) http://www.coldskills.com/pub_images/original/TAI…
Is that a shirt that some Swedish soldiers made on their own or is that the military's issued combat shirt? Thanks for the link Fredrik.
I believe it's issued combat shirt or at least bought. http://www.coldskills.com/uacshirt-m90-desert-p-1…
That would be a heck of a stitch job if he did that on his own though.
If you click on the optional photos under the main one, where they are showing the back, that was how I pictured doing a custom job. But then again I don't have any experience so I have no idea if losing that bit in the back and keeping the material on the top would hold up.
May I suggest an even better solution that I manufacture for the French troops serving in Afghanistan? I am the owner of a small sewing shop called Tiger Tailor.
As soon as your FR shirt develops a big hole, you get to throw away the whole expensive piece. Same problem if you want to wash it, how many 200USD combat shirts can you have on rotation? Again, same problem when you change your camouflage or put on a warmer shirt. My solution is to separate the upper torso and arms from the shirt. It can never ride high because there's always some kind of load on the shoulders. Follow the link for pics: http://www.tigertailor.com/2009/11/aprs-le-pantal…
Interesting idea!
Good to see us re-using old Woodland and DCU uniforms to save money. The engineering ability of our fine soldiers amazes me. Keep up the good work.
This is an excellent idea, we (Brits) were doing this with our combat shirt/issued wik t-shirts back in early 2007.
excellent, we did this with DCU's and the woodland bdu's when we saw all the multicam gucci gear. i had those too but we could only wear the desert or woodland threads. we made sure we had triple stitching everywhere along with stretch panels between the thighs. makes a huge difference while wearing plate carriers. i am very pleased to see this write up. way to go.
If we try to pull this off in the AF, leadership will take our first born, lop off our right arm and beat us with it, then Art.15 us for destruction of US property, pull 2 stripes, and send us to Leavenworth. And before the AF jokes start to fly,we do have OSI, Sec. Forces, TACPs, pilots, Para Rescue guys outside the wire getting shot at just like everyone else. Also, some one has to stay on the airfield to fix, load and launch the A-10s that are dropping bombs on the bad guys. It is nice to see ingenuity being used to fill shortcommings with the uniforms. Maybe someone on the 'Hill will see that cutting our budget will hurt more than help us. ACU/ABUs = STUPID IDEA!! BDU/DCUs were so much cheaper and much more user friendly. Shame we got rid of them.
Insane uniformity issue, as always…
"If its not issued, its not guaranteed to save your life" mentality.
And that's why special ops are special and use special stuff…
Seems like a good idea for using in the field when the Army Combat Shirt isn't allowed and you want something cooler than a normal ACU top!!! Thanks can you post front photo?
Chris, check this out: http://reflexivefire.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/…
Secrets has better uhhh beer, yeah beer. Also, what Joe these days has BDUs or DCUs? Let alone is authorized to wear them? I know, I know the special guys can wear what they want for the most part, but us not so cool kids are stuck with ACUs and Multicam. Though this did give me a solution to the problem (for me) of the sleeves on the ACS being too tight, thanks.
Yeah but the "take-out" at Secrets is waay more expensive than Sharkey's.
Best price/performance ratio to be had during my time at Bragg was Pure Titanium (Best Western conveniently located across the street).
But yeah. Cool shirts. Had mine done at Airborne Zone 1.
I can remember in "nam when we were first getting our "cammies" instead odf "Stateside utlities", and how much of a hassle we got from the staff NCO's. We gold we had to use what we were issued and "ONLY THAT" there was to be "NO MIXING OF UNIFORMS". of course we mixed and matched until we got what semmed to work for us. finally we got our "cammies and jungle boots" and then we got in trouble for rolling up the sleeves!!! Guess we can't ever win when it comes to uniforms.
As an airsofter i started doing this in 05 making my regular Bdus into SF raid ones. but i always hand stiched them. I would love to see more articles like this.